Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists, Volume 3 of 3

by Unknown

4.

Having carried our train of thought as far as this, it is time for us to proceed to the thesis in which it will be found to issue, viz., that, on the principles that have been laid down, Dissenters ought to abandon their own communion, but that members of the English Church ought not to abandon theirs. Such a position has often been treated as a paradox and inconsistency; yet we hope to be able to recommend it favorably to the reader.

Now that seceders, sectarians, independent thinkers, and the like, by whatever name they call themselves, whether "Wesleyans," "Dissenters," "professors of the national religion," "well-wishers of the Church," or even "Churchmen," are in grievous error, in their mode of exercising their private judgment, is plain as soon as stated, viz., because they do not use it in looking out for a teacher at all. They who think they have, in consequence of their inquiries, found the teacher of truth, may be wrong in the result they have arrived at; but those who despise the notion of a teacher altogether, are already wrong before they begin them. They do not start with their private judgment in that one special direction which Scripture allows or requires. Scripture speaks of a certain pillar or ground of truth, as set up to the world, and describes it by certain characteristics; dissenting teachers and bodies, so far from professing to be themselves this authority, or to contain among them this authority, assert there is no such authority to be found anywhere. When, then, we deny that they are the Church in our meaning of the word, they ought to take no offence at it, for we are not denying them any thing to which they lay claim; we are but denying them what they already put away from themselves as much as we can. They must not act like the dog in the fable (if it be not too light a comparison), who would neither use the manger himself, nor relinquish it to others; let them not grudge to others a manifest Scriptural privilege which they disown themselves. Is an ordinance of Scripture to be fulfilled nowhere, because it is not fulfilled in them? By the Church we mean what Scripture means, "the pillar and ground of the truth"; a power out of whose mouth the Word and the Spirit are never to fail, and whom whoso refuses to hear becomes thereupon to all his brethren a heathen man and a publican. Let the parties in question accept the Scripture definition, or else not resume the Scripture name; or, rather, let them seek elsewhere what they are conscious is not among themselves. We hear much of Bible Christians, Bible religion, Bible preaching; it would be well if we heard a little of the Bible Church also; we venture to say that Dissenting Churches would vanish thereupon at once, for, since it is their fundamental principle that they are not a pillar or ground of truth, but voluntary societies, without authority and without gifts, the Bible Church they cannot be. If the serious persons who are in dissent would really imitate the simple-minded Ethiopian, or the noble Bereans, let them ask themselves: "Of whom speaketh" the Apostle, or the Prophet, such great things?—Where is the "pillar and ground"?—Who is it that is appointed to lead us to Christ?—Where are those teachers which were never to be removed into a corner any more, but which were ever to be before our eyes and in our ears? Whoever is right, or whoever is wrong, they cannot be right who profess not to have found, not to look out for, not to believe in, that Ordinance to which Apostles and Prophets give their testimony. So much then for the Protestant side of the thesis.

One half of it then is easily disposed of; but now we come to the other side of it, the Roman, which certainly has its intricacies. It is not difficult to know how we should act toward a religious body which does not even profess to come to us in the name of the Lord, or to be a pillar and ground of the truth; but what shall we say when more than one society, or school, or party, lay claim to be the heaven-sent teacher, and are rivals one to the other, as are the Churches of England and Rome at this day? How shall we discriminate between them? Which are we to follow? Are tests given us for that purpose? Now if tests are given us, we must use them; but if not, and so far as not, we must conclude that Providence foresaw that the difference between them would never be so great as to require of us to leave the one for the other.

However, it is certain that much is said in Scripture about rival teachers, and that at least some of these rivals are so opposed to each other, that tests are given us, in order to our shunning the one party, and accepting the other. In such cases, the one teacher is represented to be the minister of God, and the other the child and organ of evil. The one comes in God's name, the other professes to come simply in his own name. Such a contrast is presented to us in the conflict between Moses and the magicians of Egypt; all is light on the one side, all darkness on the other. Or again, in the trial between Elijah and the prophets of Baal. There is no doubt, in such a case, that it would be our imperative duty at once to leave the teaching of Satan, and betake ourselves to the Law and the Prophets. And it will be observed that, to assist inquirers in doing so, the representatives of Almighty God have been enabled, in their contests with the enemy, to work miracles, as Moses was, for instance, and Elijah, in order to make it clear which way the true teaching lay.

But now will any one say that the contrast between the English and the Roman, or again, the Greek, Churches, is of this nature?—is any of the three a "monstrum nullâ virtute redemptum"? Moreover, the magicians and the priests of Baal "came in their own name"; is that the case with the Church, English, Roman, or Greek? Is it not certain, even at first sight, that each of these branches has many high gifts and much grace in her communion. And, at any rate, as regards our controversy with Rome, if her champions would maintain that the Church of England is the false prophet, and she the true one, then let her work miracles as Moses did in the presence of the magicians, in order to our conviction.

Probably, however, it will be admitted that the contrast between England and Rome is not of that nature; for the English Church confessedly does not come in her own name, nor can she reasonably be compared to the Egyptian magicians or the prophets of Baal; is there any other type in Scripture into which the difference between her and the Church of Rome can be resolved? We shall be referred, perhaps, to the case of the false prophets of Israel and Judah, who professed to come in the name of the Lord, yet did not preach the truth, and had no part or inheritance with God's prophets. This parallel is not happier than the former, for a test was given to distinguish between them, which does not decide between the Church of Rome and ourselves. This test is the divine accomplishment of the prophet's message, or the divine blessing upon his teaching, or the eventual success of his work, as it may be variously stated; a test under which neither Church, Roman or Anglican, will fail, and neither is eminently the foremost. Each Church has had to endure trial, each has overcome it; each has triumphed over enemies; each has had continued signs of the divine favor upon it. The passages in Scripture to which we refer are such as the following: Moses, for instance, has laid it down in the Book of Deuteronomy, that, "when a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously." To the same effect, in the Book of Ezekiel, the denunciation against the false prophet is: "Lo! when the wall is fallen, shall it not be said unto you, where is the daubing wherewith ye have daubed it?" And Gamaliel's advice to "refrain from these men, and let them alone, for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought," may be taken as an illustration of the same rule of judgment. Hence Roman Catholics themselves are accustomed to consider, that eventual failure is the sure destiny of heresy and schism; what then will they say to us? The English Church has remained in its present state three hundred years, and at the end of the time is stronger than at the beginning. This does not look like an heretical or schismatical Church. However, when she does fall to pieces, then, it may be admitted, her children will have a reason for deserting her; till then, she has no symptom of being akin to the false prophets who professed the Lord's name, and deceived the simple and unlearned; she has no symptom of being a traitor to the faith.

However, there is a third type of rival teaching mentioned in Scripture, under which the dissension between Rome and England may be considered to fall, and which it may be well to notice. Let it be observed, then, that even in the Apostles' age very grave outward differences seem to have existed between Christian teachers—that is, the organs of the one Church; and yet those differences were not, in consequence, any call upon inquirers and beholders to quit one teacher and betake themselves to another. The state of the Corinthian Christians will exemplify what we mean: Paul, Cephas, and Apollos were all friends together, yet parties were formed round each separately, which disagreed with each other, and made the Apostles themselves seem in disagreement. Is not this, at least in great measure, the state of the Churches of England and Rome? Are they not one in faith, so far forth as they are viewed in their essential apostolical character? are they not in discord, so far as their respective children and disciples have overlaid them with errors of their own individual minds? It was a great fault, doubtless, that the followers of St. Paul should have divided from the followers of St. Peter, but would it have mended matters, had any individuals among them gone over to St. Peter? Was that the fitting remedy for the evil? Was not the remedy that of their putting aside partisanship altogether, and regarding St. Paul "not after the flesh," but simply as "the minister by whom they believed," the visible representative of the undivided Christ, the one Catholic Church? And, in like manner, surely if party feelings and interests have separated us from the members of the Roman communion, this does not prove that our Church itself is divided from theirs, any more than that St. Paul was divided from St. Peter, nor is it our duty to leave our place and join them;—nothing would be gained by so unnecessary a step;—but our duty is, remaining where we are, to recognize in our own Church, not an establishment, not a party, not a mere Protestant denomination, but the Holy Church Catholic which the traditions of men have partially obscured,—to rid it of these traditions, to try to soften bitterness and animosity of feeling, and to repress party spirit and promote peace as much as in us lies. Moreover, let it be observed, that St. Paul was evidently superior in gifts to Apollos, yet this did not justify Christians attaching themselves to the former rather than the latter; for, as the Apostle says, they both were but ministers of one and the same Lord, and nothing more. Comparison, then, is not allowed us between teacher and teacher, where each has on the whole the notes of a divine mission; so that even could the Church of Rome be proved superior to our own (which we put merely as an hypothesis, and for argument's sake), this would as little warrant our attaching ourselves to it instead of our own Church, as there was warrant for one of the converts of Apollos to call himself by the name of Paul. Further, let it be observed, that the apostle reproves those who attached themselves to St. Peter equally with the Paulines or with the disciples of Apollos; is it possible he could have done so, were St. Peter the head and essence of the Church in a sense in which St. Paul was not? And, again, there was an occasion when not only their followers were at variance, but the Apostles themselves; we refer to the dissimulation of St. Peter at Antioch, and the resistance of St, Paul to it: was this a reason why St. Peter's disciples should go over to St. Paul, or rather why they should correct their dissimulation?

We are surely bound to prosecute this search after the promised Teacher of truth entirely as a practical matter, with reference to our duty and nothing else. The simple question which we have to ask ourselves is, Has the English Church sufficiently upon her the signs of an Apostle? is she the divinely-appointed teacher to us? If so, we need not go further; we have no reason to break through the divine rule of "being content with such things as we have"; we have no warrant to compare our own prophet with the prophet given to others. Nor can we: tests are not given us for the purpose. We may believe that our own Church has certain imperfections; the Church of Rome certain corruptions: such a belief has no tendency to lead us to any determinate judgment as to which of the two on the whole is the better, or to induce or warrant us to leave the one communion for the other.